Join the Club

“All means all” is easy to say. It fits on a poster. It sounds good in a mission statement. It belongs in a strategic plan, a welcome letter, a classroom doorway, and a graduation speech. The real question is whether it lives in our daily practice. During Pride Month, schools and communities have an opportunity to pause and ask a deeper question: When we say every child belongs, do we mean every child as they fully are? Not every child arrives at school feeling equally safe.

There is a familiar phrase we use when someone does not seem to fit. We say they are a square peg in a round hole. It is meant to describe a mismatch. It is meant to explain discomfort. It is meant to name the tension between a person and a system that was not designed with them in mind. In K-12 education, we use softer language, of course. We talk about placement, programming, intervention, readiness, compliance, acceleration, remediation, enrichment, behavior plans, service